12/09/2025
Gen-Z, the Constitutional Path, and the Tiger-Trap Game at Army HQ
By Yug Pathak
After the Gen-Z uprising of 9–10 September, Nepal has suddenly fallen into a crisis. The pillars of the state: the Parliament, Singha Durbar, the Supreme Court, the Presidential Palace, have been reduced to ashes. Along with the buildings, the institutions have also collapsed. The country is without a government, the streets are under army control, and public life is gripped by fear within the confines of curfew.
It is not only politics. The country’s economic structure has nearly collapsed as well. The thread of mutual trust has snapped; everyone views everyone else with suspicion. Even more terrifying is the fire raging in the social psyche. What is a country, really? Far more than a geographic boundary, it is the collective strength of a people strung together by a thread of shared thought: skill and service, production and trade, leadership and cooperation across every village, town, institution, and organization, and the ceaseless exchange and growth of knowledge and experience. This confluence of processes is what makes a country.
The state was formed to connect and coordinate, on a larger scale, all the small collective efforts of the people. Governing the state therefore means running the country. Just as you cannot clap with one hand, there can be no state without politics. Thus when a government collapses in one blow, the country itself falls into crisis. Mutual trust seems to have snapped, and social life is caught in a vortex of uncertainty. This is precisely the tragedy we are living through now.
To escape this crisis and return to normal life, the political knot must be untied first. In a democracy, political parties shoulder the burden of politics. But the Gen-Z uprising has cornered those parties. The elected Parliament has slipped into a coma overnight. Politics seems suddenly to have been flung into the courtyard of the army.
It is as if a campfire to forge the nation’s political future is burning inside Army Headquarters. News has surfaced of meetings with irrelevant figures like Durga Prasai, an accused in a sedition case and a leader of the recent “restore the king” movement. Suspicions have also arisen of secret meetings with other forces that want to drag society backward. Yet these actors were neither participants in nor fellow travelers of the Gen-Z uprising.
And so the question arises: has the fire lit in the name of the Gen-Z uprising in fact been hurled at democracy itself?
Setting fire to the pillars of democracy, Singha Durbar as the executive, the Parliament building as the legislature, and the Supreme Court as the judiciary, is this not an attempt to set ablaze the federal democratic republic? Has there been an effort, by any means, to fan that fire against the Constitution which guarantees proportional and inclusive rights to marginalized communities, women, Dalits, minorities, Adivasis, Madhesis, Tharus, and others?
The Gen-Z Uprising Agenda
The term “Gen-Z” is on everyone’s lips. But who are Gen-Z? Generation Z, named after the last letter of the English alphabet, is often shortened to Gen-Z and in tech slang rendered as Gen-Zee. This generation is generally defined as those born between 1997 and 2012.
Accustomed to digital technology, mobile phones, social media, and the internet, this generation, so the claim goes, flared up in anger at the government’s decision to shut down social media.
No matter who, from which corner, called for action via TikTok or other active social platforms, the agenda of the Gen-Z movement was anti-corruption, good governance, an end to cronyism and favoritism, and the restoration of social media.
After fresh young people were killed by government bullets, the movement suddenly took the form of a rebellion. In that rebellion, the country’s established political architecture collapsed. The Gen-Z movement had no visible organization, no identifiable leadership, and no clear ideology. Therefore, once the buildings of institutions were reduced to cinders, they had no concrete roadmap in hand for negotiations.
Because the movement’s core agenda concerned policies and procedures, Gen-Z representatives had to accept the philosophy and vision embedded in the current Constitution as their only path. Yet, analyzing the chain of events, it appears the movement has faced, and continues to face, some startling political twists.
Why did B***n, who did not take a single step with the Gen-Z movement and never climbed down from his Facebook wall to knock on people’s doors, instruct protesters immediately after the burning of Singha Durbar to dissolve Parliament and begin talks with the Army Chief? On what ideological basis did he issue these orders?
And then, was not the statement that should have been issued by the President instead released by the Army? In this tragedy, when the President should have addressed the nation to reassure the people, was it not the Army Chief who spoke in her place? If the military offices did not step forward to protect and manage the state’s core organs, how did they suddenly step forward to manage politics? Has a state of emergency been declared? By what authority, absent any lawful process, has the military assumed the right to manage the state?
Gen-Z has always raised issues deeper than just anti-corruption. They are active on Dalit emancipation, aiming to dismantle caste. They fight to break the chains of patriarchy and establish gender equality. They contribute tirelessly to the agenda of freeing minorities and marginalized communities: Janajatis, Adivasis, Madhesis, Tharus, from discrimination and bringing them into the mainstream of the state.
Gen-Z is also engaged with the economic rights of the poor. I have had the chance to meet Gen-Z youth involved in improving agriculture, the primary production system of a society in crisis. They are vocal about amending the Constitution to empower the people further and make the state more people-centric.
However, Gen-Z is present in every household, and it is not unusual for Gen-Z individuals to hold all sorts of views. It is now clear that royalist Gen-Z, the Durga Prasai faction’s Gen-Z, and others who want to turn the Gen-Z uprising into a weapon of counter-revolution have become openly active.
They will not hesitate to use Gen-Z’s virtual meetings as tools to kidnap democracy. Meanwhile, the Army Headquarters “militant den” has not disclosed which Gen-Z representatives it is meeting or what is being discussed. The Gen-Z cohort that consistently works to build a just society and does not simply drift thoughtlessly with the current to spread agitation, those are the genuine claimants to the future. They are the true bearers of the Gen-Z uprising.
The Tiger-Trap Game at Army HQ
As of the time of writing these lines, the President has not been brought out in public. Only a brief statement has been issued in her name, hinting that a solution will be found within the ambit of the Constitution. This was done after widespread demands to bring the President into the open, yet the role of the institution of the Presidency remains confined backstage. Is the Army Headquarters playing a tiger-trap game by keeping the President under undeclared house arrest? This is the most sensitive question the Gen-Z representatives should be raising.
Gen-Z’s representatives also stand in the dock of history. The blood of the martyrs of the movement is still fresh. The injured are in hospitals. The tears of the martyrs’ families have not yet dried, and in the absence of a government, they likely have not even seen a hand bringing a small bouquet of relief and solace to their homes. The cries of innocent people burned alive in the arson set by thugs are still being heard. Their families have not emerged from this tragedy.
The sparks and piles of ash from thousands of burned homes and commercial establishments keep screaming questions. Can answers to all this blood, these tears, and these screams be manufactured by playing tiger-trap campfire games at Army Headquarters? By nature, the military does not speak much. Democracy is a system conducted through public dialogue, and so it does not fit the character of Army Headquarters. Needless to say, the army was not created to do politics; it is an institution maintained with the people’s tax money to provide the state’s security.
At this moment of crisis, it is its duty to take charge of security. Though it failed on the day of the conflagrations, it cannot be forgiven forever. If the state is destroyed, its own existence will also end. Its primary duty is to take the initiative to return the state to constitutional order. Therefore, it cannot go on organizing tiger-trap games while sitting in Army Headquarters.
Finally, Army Headquarters is not and cannot be the arena of democracy. The people cannot practice freedom and sovereignty within the ring of guns. Likewise, Gen-Z representatives cannot practice the sovereignty of the uprising inside Army Headquarters. At this moment, the sovereignty of this uprising is inextricably bound up with the sovereignty of the people as a whole.
The Constitutional Path
A constitution is not just a book. In every letter of the Constitution resides the history of the people’s sacrifices: flecks of dried blood, the sighs of struggle, chapters of pain, strands of dreams, seedbeds of hope, and sketches of the future. It was not created easily, and it will not be easily broken. A constitution is forged by philosophy, and in that philosophy rests the faith of millions. A constitution is not immutable. It can be changed, but only with a higher philosophy, deeper thought, and a superior process.
The present situation is one of governmentlessness, not constitutionlessness. Therefore, in accordance with the constitutional design, the solution must be found through constitutional procedures initiated by the institution of the Presidency. No solution can emerge from the courtyard of that “militant den” at Army Headquarters. Nor has that “den” been given any authority to distribute the posts of Prime Minister and Ministers. In the past, dictatorships and autocracies repeatedly tried to run puppet governments by distributing posts on a platter.
It is precisely such autocratically run institutional corruption and misrule that still torment us. Trapped in the snares of dynasticism, favoritism, and crony policy institutionalized by those autocratic systems, the major parties are now caught in a whirlpool of crisis. And because our development and economic thinking became institutionalized in the hands of those autocracies, public participation and creativity have not taken root in our economic system.
Therefore, those who want to break the Constitution should understand that they will soon have to stand in the dock of history and of the people. If, at the price of these martyrs’ blood, Army Headquarters installs a puppet government and attempts to trample constitutional institutions under the pretext of the uprising, and if Gen-Z representatives rubber-stamp it, that will ignite an even greater rebellion. Hence, the institution of the Presidency must take immediate initiative to find a solution while preserving the Constitution’s core features.
A statement issued in the name of a President kept in a dark room has little meaning. If this is not a coup, then the President must be brought out to the public immediately, and her political initiative should be broadcast live before the people. Politics runs on ideology, not on age. The conspiracies and power-grabs now underway in dark corners are also tugs-of-war of ideology. The only difference is that this ideology is that of counter-revolution, absolutism, and the restoration of autocratic rule.
We must remember: that front seeks to strip Gen-Z, and the three generations living in their very homes, of their rights and freedoms. To defeat that attempt, it is essential to protect the Constitution. The Gen-Z that awoke yesterday must awaken even more today, with clarity of thought.
The time has come for the people to awaken, to move all initiatives for political dialogue and resolution from the courtyard of Army Headquarters back into the courtyard of democracy. The phase of despair and anger is over; the phase of awakening and reconstruction has begun. If the people fail here, history will fail.
A large segment of the economy has been reduced to ashes in the flames. To save the nation’s economy and the morale of society now, it is essential to safeguard the Constitution and politics. In this time when we must gather the dream of a new Nepal from the heaps of ash, we must awaken.
